The 48 Laws of Power Author: Robert Greene | Language: English | ISBN:
B0024CEZR6 | Format: EPUB
The 48 Laws of Power Description
Before Mastery, came The 48 Laws of Power—the New York Times bestseller that started it all Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive,
The 48 Laws of Power is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control. In the book that
People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.
Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package,
The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.
- File Size: 1041 KB
- Print Length: 452 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books; 1 edition (September 1, 2000)
- Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0024CEZR6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,937 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory - #2
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Social Philosophy - #2
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory - #2
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Social Philosophy - #2
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory
This book is well-written and very nicely designed. Beyond that, it's hard to see what the fuss is about.
First of all, and on the one hand, the book isn't the torrent of Machiavellian amorality you may have been led to believe. The author does go out of his way to make it _sound_ as though he's presenting you with sophisticated, in-the-know, just-between-us-hardheaded-realists amoral guidance. But as a matter of fact almost every bit of this advice _could_ have been presented without offense to the most traditional of morality.
(For example, the law about letting other people do the work while you take the credit is made to sound worse than it really is. Sure, it admits of a "low" interpretation. But it's also, read slightly differently, a pretty apt description of what any good manager does.)
Second, and on the other hand, the advice isn't _that_ good; it's merely well-presented. How it works will depend on who follows it; as the old Chinese proverb has it, when the wrong person does the right thing, it's the wrong thing.
And that's why I have to deduct some stars from the book. For it seems to be designed to appeal precisely to the "wrong people."
Despite some sound advice, this book is aimed not at those who (like Socrates) share the power of reason with the gods, but at those who (like Ulysses) share it with the foxes. It seeks not to make you reasonable but to make you canny and cunning. And as a result, even when it advises you to do things that really do work out best for all concerned, it promotes an unhealthy sense that your best interests are at odds with nearly everyone else's. (And that the only reason for being helpful to other people is that it will advance your own cloak-and-dagger "career.
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